Supernova Release

March 15, 2018

Welcome to the Supernova Release

A supernova is a rare event that occurs when a huge star explodes, emitting energy that can briefly outshine the entire output of a galaxy. They emit energy equal to that of the whole lifetime of a sun-like star. And while the enhancements included in our Supernova product release don’t carry the destructive force of an exploding star, we do think that they will light up your benefits strategy.

Employee Experience Enhancements

Our new employee experience was first previewed in our Andromeda release one year ago and it is continuing to be adopted by our customers. The experience was developed using responsive design, meaning that employees can shop for and enroll in benefits on any device, without having to download an app, and the site will simply adapt and work on any size screen. It is easy to use and intuitive, including elements and concepts that consumers are already familiar with, such as a shopping cart and a checkout process. Updates to the experience in Supernova include:

Plugin Benefits Updated

Plugins to Unum, Selerix, Allstate and Colonial are available in the Optional Third Party Benefits section when employees are checking out. Employees are not required to elect any of these benefits to complete their enrollment, but if interested, will be taken to the third party's website via a plugin to elect or change these elections.

Warning for Missing Dependent SSNs

Sometimes we all need a little nudge! If a dependent is imported without a Social Security Number when it is required, employees are prompted to update the information. They will also receive the warning in 'My Family' when adding dependent coverage, helping prevent delays or coverage errors.

Life Event
Pending Message

A message appears when life events are pending for an employee, but will allow them to continue to make changes. This gives employees a better understanding of where they are in the process and helps ensure that outstanding items are not forgotten.

Advanced Payroll Deductions

Our Advanced Payroll Deductions solution is a useful feature that automates the process of calculating and tracking payroll adjustments using sophisticated logic that accounts for retroactive deductions, catch-up contributions and refunds. We’ve made it even more useful by adding:

Definitions for Advanced Payroll Deduction Fields

The Advanced Payroll Deduction dashboard is updated with subtitles regarding Employee Debits and Employee Credits giving a proper explanation of these values. This arms administrators with the proper definitions of what these values are to better help them utilize the tool.

Coverage Effective Date Updates

Entering a value in the Offset Coverage Effective Date field of Advanced Payroll Deductions will now effectively update only future Coverage Effective Date fields for the selected payroll schedule. By only updating future dates, data integrity is preserved and any incorrect adjustments are avoided.

ACA Updates and Enhancements

While the Affordable Care Act may evolve in the coming years, it still remains the law of the land and its requirements have to be followed. We will continue to update our ACA solution and make it as easy as possible for employers to stay in compliance. Some enhancements in Supernova include:

Show Test Employees and New Records

The ACA Change Report now includes two checkboxes that allow administrators to show test employees, and select new records as changes, which will include new 1095 forms in the report.This gives administrators more options to view changes when generating ACA reports, which helps ensure they are seeing everything they need.

1095-C Mail Status and Transmit Status

The 1095-C editor now displays new information which provides mail status, showing the date the form was mailed; and transmit status, showing the date the form was transmitted and the status of the form. This keeps benefits teams updated at all times and gives them them the ability to see where forms are in the reporting process.

Carrier Integrations - Improved Single Sign On

To better facilitate integrations with carriers and other partners, we now support an inbound single-sign-in protocol called Oauth2 in the PlanSource system. Oauth2 is an industry-standard protocol for authorization, focusing on client developer simplicity while providing specific authorization flows for web and other applications.

Coming in 2018: Self-Service Renewal Setup

One of the most complicated and time-consuming aspects of benefits technology is the renewal process. Plans and rates have to be updated, HR and payroll systems need to be synced up, and dozens of actions must be taken to ensure that the process goes smoothly. We are working on a new tool that will drastically reduce the time and complexity of the renewal process. The tool will go into beta with select customers in the summer of 2018. The new tool will:

Greatly reduce complexity and time needed by using a Turbo Tax-like survey to streamline the renewal process

Provide brokers and employers a convenient way to update their benefit changes with a simplified online survey experience available 24x7

Offer self-service for the most common changes such as changing rates for an upcoming open enrollment